sat a monk with his book. He seemed no further disturbed
by my passing than to give me the usual salutation.

"I stopped at a little distance from him to look around and down into the
chasm below. It was enchanting in spite of the atmosphere of the sirocco.
The hills covered with woods, at a distance, reminded me of my own
country, fresh and variegated; the high peaks beyond were grey from
distance, and the sides of the nearer mountains were marked with many a
winding track, down one of which a shepherd and his sheep were
descending, looking like a moving pathway. No noise disturbed the silence
but the distant barking of the shepherd's dog (as he, like a busy
marshal, kept the order of his procession unbroken) mixing with the faint
murmuring of the waterfall and the song of the birds that inhabited the
ilex grove. It was altogether a place suited to meditation, and, were it
consistent with those duties which man owes his fellow man, here would be
the spot to which one, fond of study and averse to the noise and bustle
of the world, would love to retire."

Returning to Rome on June 3, after enjoying to the full this excursion,
from which he brought back many sketches, he found the city given over to
ceremony after ceremony connected with the Church. Saint's day followed
saint's day, each with its appropriate (or, from the point of view of the
New Englander, inappropriate) pageant; or some new church was dedicated
and the nights made brilliant with wonderful pyrotechnical displays. He
went often with pleasure to the Trinita di Monti, where the beautiful
singing of the nuns gave him special pleasure.

Commenting sarcastically on a display of fireworks in honor of St.
Francesco Caracciolo, he says:--

"As far as whizzing serpents, wheels, port-fires, rockets, and other
varieties of pyrotechnic art could set forth the humility of the saint,
it was this night brilliantly displayed."

And again, in describing the procession of the _Corpus Domini_, "the most
splendid of all the church ceremonies," it is this which particularly
impresses him:--

"Next came monks of the Franciscan and Capuchin orders, with their brown
dresses and heads shaved and such a set of human faces I never beheld.
They seemed, many of them, like disinterred corpses, for a moment
reanimated to go through this ceremony, and then to sink back again into
their profound sleep. Pale and haggard and unearthly, the wild eye of the
visionary and the stupid sta